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Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

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Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#181

Post by juliangoldsmith »

yosito wrote: post #51

I'd answer this question by asking another: Is it profitable to destroy democracy? If so, someone is going to try it. That doesn't mean capitalism is any less compatible with democracy than socialism or any other system. But if we value democracy we need to defend against economic forces that threaten it.

I'd agree with this, and take it further: if there is any person or group of people who stand to gain something by destroying freedom or democracy, you can assume they will do so. To repeat the quote commonly misattributed to Thomas Jefferson, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#182

Post by dragonwriter »

noir-york wrote: post #172
dragonwriter wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is a western democracy and does not describe itselg as a republican anything, though opponents to certain elements of the current constitution describe themselves that way. There is an overlap between democratic republics (or, to use the less common phrasing, “republican democracies”) and limited representative democracies, but they aren't the same.

The UK is what is called an aristocratic republic* as it retains the Roman Republic's setup: - Sovereign / House of Lords (Senate) / Lower house. The US Founding Fathers copied England, and Rome's model but replaced the sovereign with a President. Representative democracies are necessarily republics - although some, like my country, skip the upper house. Rome introduced consuls / republican model because the populati…

> The UK is what is called an aristocratic republic* as it retains the Roman Republic's setup: - Sovereign / House of Lords (Senate) / Lower house.

Republican Rome was distinguished from both preceding and succeeding Roman governments by not having a sovereign head.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#183

Post by Stranger43 »

nickik wrote: post #99
JamesLeonis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your nuanced answer, has there been a time when Capitalism didn't seek to dominate all of it's regulatory bodies? Unions, governments, activists, even other Capitalists as they represent competition. There's a reason leftists call Imperialism the highest form of Capitalism.

Of course they do. Adam Smith already understood this. However, just because any group in society wants to change the rules of society to their benefit, does not make the existance of those groups a bad thing per se. Sometimes people act as if that was unique for capitalist. In fact Unions, Activists, Government burocracies and so on have the exact same insentives, they want to change rules to benefit them. The reaso…

The right is just as bad as history and have mostly manage to erase the economic system Smith wanted abolished, and according to Marx had re-emerged after Smiths dead.

Or to put it differently capitalism was never envisioned as a critique of socialism, but as a critique of nationalist mercantilism, which is the same system international socialism was supposed to tackle a century after Capitalism had failed. Though by then Imperialism had replaced mercantilism as the common name for a system where one large property owners competed with each other for world supremacy with little regard for mere renters/workers.

Once could argue that capitalism was revived after the two wars to end all wars finally managed to wipe out the old feudal order(at least in Europe) but one could also argue that the european disaster merely reset the clock and gave rise to a new (mostly American) aristocracy which is now finally becoming visible as a aristocracy. For a lot of 3rd world the end of European hegemony after world war 2 was perceived more a handover from one set of foreign owners to a new one, then "freedom and democracy", and the us have toppled more democracies then it helped build, giving some credence to the theory of the US as a mercantilist empire rather then capitalist democracy.

In a lot of ways the problem is that few modern politicians(and that economist is in practice often a subclass of politician) dare to leave the confines of circular logic where morality can be a simple matter of good vs evil and history is a consistent narrative going from the bad old times to the brave new world. Which gives rise to an extremely toxic debate culture of fractions yelling general insults of each other, using words that have long since lost any resemblance of coherent meaning.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#184

Post by juliangoldsmith »

yosito wrote: post #175
juliangoldsmith wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when those privileged are able to control the primary source of information for the population? It seems likely they would be able to convince the vulnerable to give up their freedom by convincing them it was in their interest.

That's definitely a threat to democracy, but the name of that threat is not "democracy" or "captialism", it's "propaganda".

That is true. The problem is deciding what is or isn't propaganda.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#185

Post by spiralx »

gimmeDatCheddar wrote: post #178
spiralx wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When competition is allowed to enter the market, we eventually have an equilibrium where the right number of competitors is producing a good or a service at the best price and highest quality possible. That is capitalism. No, that's a highly theoretical model that doesn't exist in the real world. > When concentrations of wealth are leveraged into political power, you have cronyism in the government. That's not a fa…

It does exist in the real world, although it can sometimes become obfuscated by government regulation and intervention. Example: Entering the pharmaceutical space to produce cost-effective generic medicines in order to steal market share from the big pharmaceuticals is hard because of government red-tape. Using capital as leverage for political influence is not a central tenet of capitalism. You can be a capitalist a…

> Using capital as leverage for political influence is not a central tenet of capitalism. You can be a capitalist and remain entirely outside the political realm.

If capitalism is based around rational self-interest, why would anyone exclude political power as a means of increasing their wealth? It would be deeply irrational to avoid such an avenue.

> It does exist in the real world, although it can sometimes become obfuscated by government regulation and intervention. Example: Entering the pharmaceutical space to produce cost-effective generic medicines in order to steal market share from the big pharmaceuticals is hard because of government red-tape.

Yes, regulations will interfere with the unfettered pursuit of profit, but that's by intent.

> Why did you ignore my comment about tax revenue and spending, by the way? That was the meat of the post.

Because it didn't really seem to make much of a point. Yes government spending priorities could be different and I'm sure there's wastage that could be lessened - although I'd guess less than you think. Cronyism exists in any organisation of more than one person.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#186

Post by ryandrake »

panarky wrote: post #179
gameswithgo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the absence of big government, big corporate will become defacto government even more easily.

A fish doesn't know it's in water because it never experienced anything else. Can we imagine anything other than the system we live in? I suppose we can imagine small adjustments like higher or lower taxation, more or less regulation, increasing or decreasing subsidies for different groups. But that's like slightly changing the temperature or salinity of the water we're swimming in. It doesn't help us imagine what wa…

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” - Ursula Le Guin

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#187

Post by noir-york »

dragonwriter wrote: post #182
noir-york wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is what is called an aristocratic republic* as it retains the Roman Republic's setup: - Sovereign / House of Lords (Senate) / Lower house. The US Founding Fathers copied England, and Rome's model but replaced the sovereign with a President. Representative democracies are necessarily republics - although some, like my country, skip the upper house. Rome introduced consuls / republican model because the populati…

> The UK is what is called an aristocratic republic* as it retains the Roman Republic's setup: - Sovereign / House of Lords (Senate) / Lower house. Republican Rome was distinguished from both preceding and succeeding Roman governments by not having a sovereign head.

Yep, Augustus didn't like sharing power :D He must have felt guilty about it though because the Empire post-republic tried to keep up the appearance of Rome as Republic, if not in substance.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#188

Post by spiralx »

rizzom5000 wrote: post #134
athenot wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corruption is just the free market between those who have power but (relatively) no wealth, and those who have wealth but (relatively) no power. It's treating power and influence as just another asset that can be purchased (with wealth).

Those who have power can freely take wealth e.g. taxation but those who have wealth cannot freely take power. Corrupt politicians might treat power as a free market commodity; but that's still corruption and not a market.

> Corrupt politicians might treat power as a free market commodity; but that's still corruption and not a market.

A might treat B as a market commodity, but that's not a market. What does make a market then, if not having commodities in a market?

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#189

Post by athenot »

rizzom5000 wrote: post #134
athenot wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corruption is just the free market between those who have power but (relatively) no wealth, and those who have wealth but (relatively) no power. It's treating power and influence as just another asset that can be purchased (with wealth).

Those who have power can freely take wealth e.g. taxation but those who have wealth cannot freely take power. Corrupt politicians might treat power as a free market commodity; but that's still corruption and not a market.

Yes I'm not defending the market, just calling it out.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#190

Post by debacle »

spiralx wrote: post #171
debacle wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to sound dismissive, but that's a knowledge problem. Many people have no idea how to procure capital, nor what capital procurement even entails. There are few viable routes to becoming an entrepreneur, and most people would agree that the most viable route is learning from other entrepreneurs. For me, learning how to operate a business required a lot of reading, failure, and bad decisions. For someone wh…

> So while I agree with you that most people are excluded from maximizing their potential, I think the root cause is not a lack of capital, but a lack of knowledge about how to interact with capital. And do you not think that this is a function of how much capital one has access to in the first place? Leaving aside the research showing how poverty affects development, those born to families with wealth will have both…

There is no stacked deck. No one cheated because they have business savvy parents or friends. Everyone can go to busines school, or learn things the hard way. The knowledge is there, and the people who have great enough desire find it. Teaching it universally would be a great social good.
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